Name and date your photos

Recently our youngest son celebrated his 50th birthday and his wife asked us for photographs of him as a baby and his growing up years.

Ada has stored pictures for a long time in boxes and end tables and in a special cabinet downstairs. Therefore, it was a real job to find the special ones we needed in a short time. We have both spent a lot of time looking for just the right ones, and as you all probably know, looking through pictures is a lot of fun but very time consuming. While looking through these old pictures we also made a point of writing the names of people, date and location on the backs. It is amazing how we forget what we did when.

I have taken many pictures in my lifetime but not until I was able to use the digital camera, did I start to get things really organized. We have put most of our pictures on CD’s. One CD will hold a year’s photos in most cases.

I have the Picasa program on my computer, which is free from Google, and have been able to keep photos in files according to date and occasion. There are other software programs available that can store and archive your photos. One of them is www.shutterfly.com and it offers unlimited uploads and storage and is free, but you must purchase photos or other products at least once a year. This provides you a way to have a backup of photos away from your home and computer.

Another option would be to install a second drive in your computer. Big drives are relatively cheap but if you do not want to deal with the installation, buy an external drive. Photos take up a lot of space in a computer.

Printing your photos is a good idea but the life span of home-printed photos is subject to debate. Even so, they are sure nice to have and we have relived 50 years of memories in the last several weeks.